Trump, Twitter and the Ban Debate - Binoy Kampmark

Trump, Twitter and the Ban Debate

By Binoy
Kampmark

It is said that Twitter has been
responsible for stirring nascent revolutions in the Middle
East, going beyond its initial description as the Seinfeld
platform of social media. It has also been targeted by
authorities for stirring the pot, lighting fires and
generally being a nuisance.

What then, of the terms of use?
Given the nature of the platform, community guidelines, of a
sort, are supposedly meant to be followed. This hardly means
that they are enforced with any zeal. It means that an
individual such as minor celebrity Tila Tequila, whose
social media rants were often richly anti-Semitic, will only
be banned after taking a bridge too far. That bridge was
crossed in posting a picture of herself in the company of two
men luxuriating with the Nazi salute.

The suspensions
share a thread of inconsistency, though they veer from
aspects of bullying (such as New Zealander Hanna, known on
Twitter as “Poison Ivy” or then 19-year-old Jane Oranika
on racial suggestiveness in an online make-up video on how to make a White Face. “Barack
Obama? Is that some kind of sauce?” Trump supporters
didn’t see the humour in that.

Various, even more venal
figures have made it to the ban list. George Zimmerman, who
gunned down an unarmed Trayvon Martin in 2012, was suspended
in 2015. But it was the now oft used term “revenge
porn” that ultimately sank his social media bliss, despite
previously posting a picture of his murderous handiwork:
Martin, lingering lifelessly in the grass.

The knotted
realm of bitchiness and abuse is one thing; but removing
political activists from the platform for violating various
forms of claimed conduct is an onerous, and in some cases
dangerous task. One of the discordant voices of the
alt-right movement, and Breitbart’s former tech editor,
Milo Yiannopoulos, provides such a case. When does free
speech, notably of the insensitive sort, transmute into pure
hate speech?

Where Yiannopoulos ran foul was leading a
social media strike on actress Leslie Jones of
Ghostbusters fame, a form of character assassination
in text. This got him booted off the platform in 2016.
Since then, he has been doing a merry dance on the
controversial plank, suggesting the possibility that 13-year-olds might have learning sexual
relationships with older pedagogues. Such inspirations
of antiquity have not gone down well in a social media world
less attuned to manuscripts than bleeps.

Which brings us,
at last, to the President himself. Donald Trump has
conjured, confected and suggested as few others on Twitter.
He has made the social media platform a direct link to the
voter in unprecedented ways.

He has also, according to
the creator of House of Cards, Beau Willimon, done enough to
be blackballed by the Twitter party. His suggestions go
further than most. He argues that the Trump tweet fest
poses a “national security threat” which emboldens
“our enemies to take advantage of his flagrant
shortcomings.”

Willimon’s views are traditionally
contractarian, though he notes that Trump is different from any user.
“Only one person on @Twitter is President of the United
States. That comes with a supreme and unique
responsibility.”

Twitter may well connect the globe,
but, “That comes with its own responsibility: to do your
part in protecting the world.” In accusing former
President Barack Obama of having “wire tapped” Trump Tower,
with no evidence, the Trump show had generated the grounds
for deletion.

Much of the argument on banning Trump from
Twitter is precisely because of his effect. He may be the
first instance in history of a verifiable, causally
effective figure on the platform. Not all of his less than
140 character notes have been atrocious, let alone
distasteful. Amidst the slime lurk bits of Schadenfreude
everybody can enjoy. Where will the wrecking ball strike
next?

Lockheed Martin, to take one example, felt the
shareholder pinch at various Trump tweets, most notably on
the “tremendous cost and cost overruns” of the F-35 fighter program. Shares in
December fell by 2 per cent, surely a joy for anybody
against the Military Industrial Complex. Since then, the
President has withdrawn that wrecking ball, changing his
tune on the F-35 to embrace it for its sudden efficiency on
costing.

Other arguments suggest that Twitter, being a
private platform, generates its own rules. Free speech can
never morph into hate speech; and so on. Going into a bar
may well see you served a drink. The publican, however,
reserves the right to ignore your custom at any one point
for drunkenness or any other number of reasons, not all of
them reasonable.

As shown previously, the puppeteers of
the platform are not always predictable. Nor, perhaps, can
they be. Besides, shutting off the Trump reality show from
a crucial feature of his communications apparatus would be
to deprive Planet Earth, not merely of a hysterical show,
but a first hand, unvarnished view of what the current
President of the United States thinks. That would be even
more dangerous.

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